Rockstar Games

• 1. Introduction

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  Rockstar Games is an American video game publisher based in New York City, and one of its releases has sold over 220 million copies. That game is Grand Theft Auto V, which arrived in September 2013 and became the second-best-selling video game of all time.

  Behind that figure sits a company that has bought studios on several continents and built its own game engine. It has also thrown club nights, produced films and launched a record label. This documentary asks how a publisher born inside another company's portfolio grew into this, who steered it, and what it has cost the people who work there.

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• 2. Inherited Assets

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  On the 12th of March 1998, Take-Two Interactive announced a deal for the assets of BMG Interactive, a dormant British video game publisher. The seller was BMG Entertainment, a unit of Bertelsmann. Payment came in stock, with Take-Two issuing 1.85 million shares, around 16 percent of its common shares. The deal was announced as closed on the 25th of March. Among the prizes were DMA Design's Grand Theft Auto and Space Station Silicon Valley.

  Five people then moved to New York City to work for Take-Two. Dan Houser, Sam Houser and Jamie King had been BMG Interactive executives, and Gary Foreman had also worked there. Terry Donovan came from Arista Records, a record label inside BMG Entertainment.

  A restructuring announced that April named Sam Houser as Take-Two's vice president of worldwide product development. In December 1998, the Houser brothers, Donovan and King established Rockstar Games as Take-Two's "high-end" publishing label. The formation was formally announced on the 22nd of January 1999.

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• 3. Studios And Technology

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  Rockstar Canada joined in 1999 and was the first studio to be absorbed, later taking the name Rockstar Toronto. Based in Oakville, Ontario, it traces its roots to the early 1980s and developed The Warriors along with several Windows ports. Every studio that followed carries the Rockstar name and logo, each in its own color. The headquarters is sometimes called Rockstar New York, Rockstar NY or Rockstar NYC. The company also owns a motion capture studio in Bethpage, New York.

  Rockstar North in Edinburgh was founded in 1988 and acquired in 2002. It develops the Grand Theft Auto series and Manhunt. Rockstar San Diego, in Carlsbad, California, dates to 1984 and joined in the same year, 2002. It handles the Red Dead, Smuggler's Run and Midnight Club series. Rockstar Leeds, founded in 1997 and acquired in 2004, made Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. Rockstar London, founded in 2005, made Manhunt 2 and Midnight Club: L.A. Remix. Rockstar New England in Andover, Massachusetts, founded in 1999 and acquired in 2008, made Bully: Scholarship Edition. Rockstar Lincoln, founded in 1992 and acquired in 2002, handles localization and quality assurance.

  In May 2019, Rockstar announced it was buying Dhruva Interactive from Starbreeze Studios. The sale was finalized later that month, and the Dhruva team merged into Rockstar India, based in Bengaluru. In October 2020, the Scottish studio Ruffian Games was acquired and rebranded Rockstar Dundee. In March 2025, Rockstar announced it would buy Video Games Deluxe, a Sydney studio staffed by former L.A. Noire developers. Renamed Rockstar Australia, it is the newest member and developed L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files.

  Two studios no longer exist as separate operations. Rockstar Vancouver, founded in 1998 and acquired in 2002, developed Bully and Max Payne 3. It was merged into Rockstar Toronto in July 2012. Rockstar Vienna, founded in 1993 and acquired in 2003, developed several Xbox ports and was closed down in May 2006. As of 2018, the company employed more than 2,000 people across all offices. Max Payne 3 credited the studios collectively as Rockstar Studios, while Red Dead Redemption 2 simply said Rockstar Games.

  Since 2006, the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, known as RAGE, has run most of the company's console and personal computer titles. It was built by the RAGE Technology Group inside Rockstar San Diego. Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto IV, Max Payne 3, Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 all use it.

  Rockstar Games Social Club is an online service for authentication and multiplayer in the company's games. Most of its branding had been removed from Rockstar's website by November 2023. On the 17th of September 2019, Rockstar released its own launcher for Windows. It connects to a Social Club account and can start Rockstar games bought elsewhere, such as on Steam.

  In August 2023, Rockstar acquired Cfx.re, also known as CitizenFX. That team runs the modding platforms FiveM for Grand Theft Auto V and RedM for Red Dead Redemption 2. Founded in 2016, it is the one part of the company listed as remote.

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• 4. Games And Philosophy

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  The original Grand Theft Auto appeared in 1997, before Rockstar existed, and the company took over the series from BMG Interactive. Action-adventure is the genre Rockstar publishes most, and racing games have also done well. Red Dead, Midnight Club, Max Payne and Manhunt are the other popular franchises. By February 2014, Rockstar titles had shipped more than 250 million copies. By November 2016, the Grand Theft Auto series alone had shipments of at least 250 million.

  At the 10th British Academy Games Awards in March 2014, Rockstar received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award. The citation praised the company for "creating intricately layered interactive worlds that have kept the company at the forefront of the gaming industry for over a decade, both critically and commercially".

  In October 2011, Dan Houser explained to the Japanese magazine Famitsu why Rockstar stays away from first-person shooters. He said "it is in our DNA to avoid doing what other companies are doing... the goalpoint of Rockstar is to have the players really feel what we're trying to do." He added that the company's games had differed from any existing genre, and that the Grand Theft Auto series created new ones. In his words, "We didn't rely on testimonials in a business textbook to do what we've done.... If we make the sort of games we want to play, then we believe people are going to buy them."

  Rockstar has also done charitable work. It has supported Movember, offered appearances in its games as raffle prizes and taken part in charity live streams.

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• 5. Leadership Changes

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  Sam Houser has led Rockstar Games as president since its beginning. In January 2007, Take-Two announced that Terry Donovan, then the managing director, had left after a four-month leave of absence. Gary Dale succeeded him as chief operating officer. Dale had worked with the Houser brothers and King at BMG Interactive, left when Take-Two acquired it, and in 2003 joined Capcom's European operations as managing director.

  Jennifer Kolbe started at the front desk of Take-Two and now serves as Rockstar's head of publishing. She oversees all of its development studios. Simon Ramsey is head of PR and communications.

  Red Dead Redemption 2 came out in early 2019, and Dan Houser took an extended break afterward. He left Rockstar Games on the 11th of March 2020. In 2023, Michael Unsworth, the vice president of writing, also departed after sixteen years with the company.

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• 6. Clubs, Films, And Records

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  In 1999, Terry Donovan and Sam Houser teamed up with promoter John Davis to create the Rockstar Loft club night. Davis had co-founded Body & Soul, a weekly party at Tribeca's Club Vinyl billed as having no guestlist and no velvet rope. Donovan, a former DJ, had been struck by it on arriving in New York City. The pair wanted publicity for the young company, and Donovan wanted an alternative to overpriced events where guests were "bulldozed by security". He banned video game installations from the venue so the music and the artists stayed in focus.

  With little money for television advertising, Rockstar sent guerrilla marketing teams to hand out fly posters and stickers. Loft tickets were not sold in advance. Hopeful guests phoned a number and answered seven questions about their personality. If the operator liked the answers, a ticket arrived in the mail. The first Loft took place in western Chelsea, Manhattan, on the 30th of October 1999. Andi Hanley, Bob Sinclar and Dimitri from Paris headlined. Another followed on the 19th of February 2000, and the series was wound down later that year.

  Around the release of Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, Kirk Ewing says a producer in Los Angeles phoned him wanting film rights. Ewing was a friend of the Houser brothers who had worked with Rockstar on State of Emergency. The proposal was for a film directed by Tony Scott, of Top Gun, and starring the rapper Eminem. Sam Houser said he was not interested.

  In 2004, Rockstar produced The Football Factory, a sports drama based on John King's book about organized football hooliganism in the United Kingdom. It also produced Sunday Driver, a documentary about the Majestics Lowrider Club in Compton, California. A third piece, The Introduction, is an animated film about the events leading up to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The last two shipped with the game's special edition in 2005.

  In May 2021, Rockstar launched CircoLoco Records with Circoloco, an Ibiza-based dance party. The partnership grew from a friendship between Sam Houser and the party's promoter, Antonio Carbonaro. Party manager Nick Benedetti said both sides hoped to "contribute something new and meaningful" to a dance music scene hurt by pandemic lockdowns. The label's first release, Monday Dreamin', came out as a series of extended plays starting in June 2021.

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• 7. Labor Disputes

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  In October 2018, the journalist Jason Schreier published an account of crunch culture at Rockstar Games. He wrote that "Most current and former Rockstar employees said they had been asked or felt compelled to work nights and weekends," with many reporting an average of 55 to 60 hours a week. Rockstar acknowledged some evening and weekend work. It disputed the average, calling the figures "individual anecdotes which are usually self-selecting...for the most extreme ends of the scale."

  In October 2025, Rockstar fired 30 to 40 employees in Canada and the United Kingdom, citing public discussion and distribution of confidential information. Take-Two Interactive said the firings were "for gross misconduct, and for no other reason". The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain denied this and accused the company of union busting. It said the employees had been trying to unionize with organizers on Discord. Its president, Alex Marshall, called the firings the "most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry".

  On the 6th of November, the union organized protests outside Rockstar North and Take-Two's Edinburgh and London offices. Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer attended and supported them. In December 2025, Labour MP Chris Murray raised the dismissals at Prime Minister's Questions after meeting the affected workers. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the firings "deeply concerning" and said the Government would investigate.

  In January 2026, the Glasgow Employment Tribunal held a preliminary hearing on interim relief, which would have kept the workers on pay until a full hearing. It refused, saying it did not appear likely that a full hearing would find union membership the principal reason for dismissal. The Rockstar Games Workers Union was formed in May, with employees from the Dundee, Leeds, Lincoln, London and North studios.

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• 8. Data Breaches

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  In September 2022-90 videos from the development of Grand Theft Auto VI were leaked. Rockstar described the incident as a "network intrusion". It said it was "extremely disappointed" by the way the game was first shown to the public. It did not expect long-term effects on development.

  In April 2026, the hacking group ShinyHunters targeted Rockstar and threatened to leak information on the 14th of April. In a statement to Kotaku, the company confirmed the breach. It said the incident had "no impact on our organization or our players".

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